British girls are among the most violent in the world, and binge drinking may be to blame, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Jan. 24.

A World Health Organization study found that about one in three U.K. girls said they had been in a fight during the previous year, compared to a worldwide average of 23 percent. The highest rate of female violence was found in Hungary, where 32 percent of girls said they had been in a fight; the lowest rate of violence was reported in Finland, at 13 percent.

"In the last 10 years alcohol consumption among British girls has been going up to the point where there is now virtually no gender difference in drinking between boys and girls," said study co-author Candace Currie, director of Edinburgh University's child and adolescent health research unit. "That's not true in the rest of Europe. What we have to ask is whether fighting is part of this behavior of drunkenness or whether there are other factors involved."

The study also looked at violence among boys: young males in the Czech Republic reported the highest levels of violence, with 69 percent reporting a past-year fight, while Finnish boys were the least likely to fight (37 percent).